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I hit 60,000 words this week.
I would love to tell you it happened at a sunny desk on a proper writing retreat. The truth is less glamorous, and a lot more me.
A very quiet week
I took a week of vacation and wrote every single day of it. Then I got sick, and stayed sick for about two weeks. For a good stretch of that I did three things and three things only: slept, ate, and wrote. Being stuck in one room with nothing but tea and a manuscript turned out to be an accidental writing retreat in disguise.
Here is the thing I have been living inside these past weeks. Printed, dedication and all.
Where the story is
Saelynn is, at this exact moment, making her situation a great deal worse. She does not know it yet. I do, which is a strange and slightly guilty kind of fun to write.
The best surprise has been the supporting cast. Somewhere in these last ten thousand words I have gotten to know them properly, the way you only can once a story has been running long enough for everyone to stop performing and start being themselves. They keep doing things I did not plan. I am letting them.
I drew a map
Remember the book I could not stop talking about last time, For Whom the Belle Tolls? It got so far under my skin that it did something I did not expect. I finished it, sat with the particular ache a good book leaves behind, and then picked up a pen and drew a map. My own map, of my own world.
This is Garadag, up at the top of this letter. I will not tell you yet what happens inside those walls. But you have seen it now, which means we are in this together.
Where the pendants begin
I am writing this from the middle of Sweden, in Bergslagen, old mining country where the ground has been giving things up for centuries. This is the exact spot where I find the bergslagssten, the stone I turn into the little pendants I keep mentioning.
There is something fitting about it. A story about a broken world, made in part from a place that was dug open and just kept going.
What comes next
I am so close now, and so eager to reach the end of this first draft. When it is done I am taking a short break, and then going straight into draft two, which is where a messy, living first draft turns into an actual book.
And there may be a way to read it sooner than you would think. I am looking at letting a few alpha readers in while it is still raw. Nothing official yet. Stay tuned.
Your turn
I read every reply, so tell me: what have you been stubborn about lately? The thing you kept doing when your body, or your schedule, or your voice quietly suggested you stop. I would love to hear it.
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